WILTON, Conn. - GE Infrastructure, a unit of General Electric Co., completed its acquisition of Edwards Systems Technology (EST), the fire detection systems business of SPX Corporation and a leading fire prevention provider to the correctional market.

"Acquiring Edwards positions us as a leader in the $5 billion fire detection and life safety segment," said Bill Woodburn, president and CEO of GE Infrastructure. "By combining Edwards' technology and channel strength with the broader security offering of GE, we can now offer an integrated facility management solution. We see significant revenue and cost synergies with this combination, and expect the acquisition to be accretive to GE's 2005 earnings."

According to Ken Boyda, president and CEO of GE Infrastructure's Security business, "We're seeing a convergence of technologies in the security arena, and a strong fire and life safety business is key to presenting an integrated facility management solution."

Executives believe that because fire security is a universally-mandated security technology, there is significant opportunity to grow sales in complementary areas like access control, video surveillance and related services for commercial and large scale infrastructure projects.